Go integration for Grafana Cloud

The Go programming language (golang) is a programming language designed at Google to make programmers more productive in applications with strong networking concurrency needs. This integration enables the agent to send Golang runtime metrics instrumented by Prometheus client_golang or OpenTelemetry Golang runtime metrics to Grafana Cloud along with a useful default dashboard for visualization.

This integration includes 1 pre-built dashboard to help monitor and visualize Go metrics.

Before you begin

This integration monitors the Go runtime for a process that exposes metrics through Golang client.

Please check the docs for details on how to expose your Go runtime metrics.

Install Go integration for Grafana Cloud

In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections in the left-hand menu.
Find Go and click its tile to open the integration.
Review the prerequisites in the Configuration Details tab and set up Grafana Agent to send Go metrics to your Grafana Cloud instance.
Click Install to add this integration’s pre-built dashboard to your Grafana Cloud instance, and you can start monitoring your Go setup.

Configuration snippets for Grafana Alloy

Simple mode

These snippets are configured to scrape a single Go instance running locally with default ports.

First, manually copy and append the following snippets into your alloy configuration file.

Metrics snippets

discovery.relabel "metrics_integrations_integrations_go" {
	targets = [{
		__address__ = "localhost:8080",
	}]

	rule {
		target_label = "instance"
		replacement  = constants.hostname
	}
}

prometheus.scrape "metrics_integrations_integrations_go" {
	targets    = discovery.relabel.metrics_integrations_integrations_go.output
	forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
	job_name   = "integrations/go"
}

Advanced mode

The following snippets provide examples to guide you through the configuration process.

To instruct Grafana Alloy to scrape your Go instances, manually copy and append the snippets to your alloy configuration file, then follow subsequent instructions.

Advanced metrics snippets

discovery.relabel "metrics_integrations_integrations_go" {
	targets = [{
		__address__ = "localhost:8080",
	}]

	rule {
		target_label = "instance"
		replacement  = constants.hostname
	}
}

prometheus.scrape "metrics_integrations_integrations_go" {
	targets    = discovery.relabel.metrics_integrations_integrations_go.output
	forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
	job_name   = "integrations/go"
}

To monitor your Go instance, you must use a discovery.relabel component to discover your Go Prometheus endpoint and apply appropriate labels, followed by a prometheus.scrape component to scrape it.

Configure the following properties within each discovery.relabel component:

__address__: The address to your Go Prometheus metrics endpoint.
instance label: constants.hostname sets the instance label to your Grafana Alloy server hostname. If that is not suitable, change it to a value uniquely identifies this Go instance.

If you have multiple Go servers to scrape, configure one discovery.relabel for each and scrape them by including each under targets within the prometheus.scrape component.

Grafana Agent static configuration (deprecated)

The following section shows configuration for running Grafana Agent in static mode which is deprecated. You should use Grafana Alloy for all new deployments.

Before you begin

This integration monitors the Go runtime for a process that exposes metrics through Golang client.

Please check the docs for details on how to expose your Go runtime metrics.

Install Go integration for Grafana Cloud

In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections in the left-hand menu.
Find Go and click its tile to open the integration.
Review the prerequisites in the Configuration Details tab and set up Grafana Agent to send Go metrics to your Grafana Cloud instance.
Click Install to add this integration’s pre-built dashboard to your Grafana Cloud instance, and you can start monitoring your Go setup.

Post-install configuration for the Go integration

After enabling the metrics generation, you should instruct Grafana Agent to scrape your go runtime instance.

The client_golang lib exposes a /metrics endpoint. To scrape it, add the provided snippet to your agent configuration file.

Make sure to change targets in the snippet according to your environment.

Configuration snippets for Grafana Agent

Below metrics.configs.scrape_configs, insert the following lines and change the URLs according to your environment:

    - job_name: integrations/go
      relabel_configs:
        - replacement: '<your-instance-name>'
          target_label: instance
      static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:8080']

Full example configuration for Grafana Agent

Refer to the following Grafana Agent configuration for a complete example that contains all the snippets used for the Go integration. This example also includes metrics that are sent to monitor your Grafana Agent instance.

integrations:
  prometheus_remote_write:
  - basic_auth:
      password: <your_prom_pass>
      username: <your_prom_user>
    url: <your_prom_url>
  agent:
    enabled: true
    relabel_configs:
    - action: replace
      source_labels:
      - agent_hostname
      target_label: instance
    - action: replace
      target_label: job
      replacement: "integrations/agent-check"
    metric_relabel_configs:
    - action: keep
      regex: (prometheus_target_sync_length_seconds_sum|prometheus_target_scrapes_.*|prometheus_target_interval.*|prometheus_sd_discovered_targets|agent_build.*|agent_wal_samples_appended_total|process_start_time_seconds)
      source_labels:
      - __name__
  # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `integrations` section.
  # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
logs:
  configs:
  - clients:
    - basic_auth:
        password: <your_loki_pass>
        username: <your_loki_user>
      url: <your_loki_url>
    name: integrations
    positions:
      filename: /tmp/positions.yaml
    scrape_configs:
      # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `logs.configs.scrape_configs` section.
      # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
metrics:
  configs:
  - name: integrations
    remote_write:
    - basic_auth:
        password: <your_prom_pass>
        username: <your_prom_user>
      url: <your_prom_url>
    scrape_configs:
      # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `metrics.configs.scrape_configs` section.
      # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
    - job_name: integrations/go
      relabel_configs:
        - replacement: '<your-instance-name>'
          target_label: instance
      static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:8080']
  global:
    scrape_interval: 60s
  wal_directory: /tmp/grafana-agent-wal

Dashboards

The Go integration installs the following dashboards in your Grafana Cloud instance to help monitor your system.

Golang runtime

Go runtime metrics

Metrics

The most important metrics provided by the Go integration, which are used on the pre-built dashboard, are as follows:

go_cgo_go_to_c_calls_calls_total
go_gc_duration_seconds
go_goroutines
go_info
go_memstats_alloc_bytes
go_memstats_buck_hash_sys_bytes
go_memstats_gc_sys_bytes
go_memstats_heap_alloc_bytes
go_memstats_heap_idle_bytes
go_memstats_heap_inuse_bytes
go_memstats_heap_objects
go_memstats_heap_released_bytes
go_memstats_heap_sys_bytes
go_memstats_mcache_sys_bytes
go_memstats_mspan_sys_bytes
go_memstats_other_sys_bytes
go_memstats_stack_sys_bytes
go_memstats_sys_bytes
go_threads
process_runtime_go_cgo_calls
process_runtime_go_gc_pause_ns_bucket
process_runtime_go_goroutines
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_alloc
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_alloc_bytes
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_idle
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_idle_bytes
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_inuse
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_inuse_bytes
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_objects
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_released
process_runtime_go_mem_heap_released_bytes
process_start_time_seconds
runtime_uptime
runtime_uptime_milliseconds_total
up

Changelog

# 1.1.0 - September 2024

* This integration now supports prometheus [client_golang](https://github.com/prometheus/client_golang) and OTel [Golang runtime metrics ](https://pkg.go.dev/go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/runtime) at the same time
* Dashboard update: swap 'Golang runtime' row and 'Go runtime: memory' rows.

# 1.0.0 - May 2024

* Updated dashboard: Refactored with observability library.

# 0.0.6 - September 2023

* New Filter Metrics option for configuring the Grafana Agent, which saves on metrics cost by dropping any metric not used by this integration. Beware that anything custom built using metrics that are not on the snippet will stop working.
* New hostname relabel option, which applies the instance name you write on the text box to the Grafana Agent configuration snippets, making it easier and less error prone to configure this mandatory label.

# 0.0.5 - January 2023

* Update dashboard panels to TimeSeries.

# 0.0.4 - September 2022

* Update dashboard panels.

# 0.0.3 - January 2022

* Update mixin to latest version:
  - Use `job` variable in panels legend

# 0.0.2 - October 2021

* Update mixin to latest version:
  - Update the datasource template variable label to 'Data Source'

# 0.0.1 - November 2020

* Initial release

Cost

By connecting your Go instance to Grafana Cloud, you might incur charges. To view information on the number of active series that your Grafana Cloud account uses for metrics included in each Cloud tier, see Active series and dpm usage and Cloud tier pricing.